OHB plans Moon mission in memory of Manfred Fuchs

Bremen (Germany), Betzdorf (Luxembourg), – In memory of Prof. Dott.-Ing. h.c. Manfred Fuchs, the founder of OHB, who passed away on April 26, 2014, OHB will carry out a lunar mission at the end of October 2014.

The technical management of the mission as well as the manufacturing of the probe will be carried out by LuxSpace of Luxembourg. “This is the first ever privately funded mission to the moon and it happens 45 years after the first landing on the moon,” says Jochen Harms, Managing Director of LuxSpace.

Model of the 4M spacecraft in front of the moon. Copyright OHB Systems.

The mission will carry a small number of small scientific instruments. These are a radio amateur beacon, which will allow the sending of messages and at the same time test a new approach to locate the spacecraft through inverse triangulation. A further instrument will provide radiation measures throughout its trajectory around the moon.
Further moon missions including landing are planned within the next few years.

The mission

The spacecraft will be part of the last stage of a lunar mission, due to be launched end of October 2014. The trajectory will be a lunar flyby and return to Earth, with 90% chances of re-entry in the atmosphere. The 10% remaining chances lead to a very interesting orbit.

The nominal mission duration is 196 hours, 8.17 days. The nominal Lunar flyby will occur on the 28 Oct 2014 00:28:00.000 UTC at 373000 km distance to the Earth, and 13000 km over the Moon surface.

The 4M spacecraft will transmit on 145.980 MHz +/- 2.9kHz (-40°C to +125°C), Doppler max: -2200Hz, +1000Hz. The continuous transmissions will start 4670s (77.8 minutes) after launch (-0, +600s). Five successive 1 minute sequences are sent during the 5 minutes cycle. The digital mode JT65B will be used, this can be decoded by radio amateurs using the free WJST software, there will also be ‘human readable’ tone transmissions. For the use of this software from Princeton University, follow this link.The transmission will start 4670s (77.8 minutes) after launch.

The spacecraft comprises the following equipment:

Primary power source: 28 high energy density, non-rechargeable cells, guaranteeing the nominal mission whilst providing 6W to the main payload and the experiments,

OHB encourages radio amateurs around the world to receive the transmissions and send in data. There will be a number of Experiments and Contests with prizes to the winners in each experiment and category.